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She is reported to have dug trenches in her village in the Second World War and during her life worked on her local collective farm in Zayukovo village of Kabardino-Balkaria republic.

Last year she was hailed as the oldest voter in Russian when she supported Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin presidential election.

She was 62 – already a pensioner – when Putin, now 66, was born, according to her chronology.

Her son Hussein said: “She did not have any kind of special diet.

Nanu Shaova at her home in Caucuses (Image: east2west news)

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“She only said that it is important to work a lot.

“She said – the more and the better you work, the healthier you will be.

“There was something genetic in it too – her mother, my granny lived for 117 years.”

A tribute from officials in her region after her death on Monday said: “Nanu Shaova, a centenarian from the village of Zayukovo, in Kabardino-Balkaria’s Baksan district, and Russia’s oldest woman, according to the Russia Book of Records, has died at the age of 128.

“She would have turned 129 in May.

“The administration of Baksan district offers its most sincere condolences to her family.”

However doubts have been expressed about Nanu’s age.

Nanu Shaova died at her home (Image: east2west news)

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For many elderly people in the Caucasus the birth records no longer exist.

For this reason her passport showed her as being born on 00.00.1890 – because she remembered only the year of her birth, and not the day or month.

Her biography also suggests that her five children with her second husband were all born following the Second World War – when she was aged 55 or older.

Vladimir Putin (Image: Getty)

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A sceptic wrote: “She surely added 20 or 30 years to her age in order to qualify for an early pension…

“Many people claimed their documents were lost or burned, and did the same thing. She was certainly old, but not more than 95.”

Her son has admitted that while she had a clear recollection of the Second World War, she “hardly remembered” the First World War even though she would have been 28 when it ended.

Nanu Shaova was alive during the Russian Revolution (Image: AFP)

Another discrepancy is that Russia recognised Nanu as the country’s oldest citizen when another woman living in Chechnya is currently shown to be 129 by her passport and pension documents.

Koku Istambulova, apparently born on 1 June 1889, gave lucid testimony on how she was deported with the entire Chechen population by Stalin to the steppes of Kazakhstan 75 years ago.